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Tuesday, February 24, 2009

"And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it."

First of all, a nation didn't invent the automobile, an individual, a small group or at most a company invented it. Not a nation. And second, the nation in which the inventors, Daimler and Maybach, lived, was Germany, not America.

I love my country, the United States, I subscribe to a significant extent in American Exceptionalism, and I fervently hope our best days are not behind us. But holding such beliefs does not, should not, require frequent, incorrect, un-supported assertions such as:

Americans are the hardest-working people in the world (that title probably goes to subsistence farmers in any number of undeveloped locales). I don't want to be the hardest-working person. I would like to be the smartest-working person.

Our [blank] system is the best in the world...clinging to that outdated belief might explain why we have tolerated decades of excessive inflation in healthcare costs.

We invented the English language.

Our companies and workers can out-compete anybody, if given a level playing field.

That kind of mindless semi-jingoism doesn't serve anybody well.

(Note: I can easily forgive this mistake on the part of a busy President, but the speechwriters have not excuse.)

1 comment:

I agree with you. What i try to remember is that he is talking to the larger populous who are mostly infected with blind nationalism and eat that stuff up.

I love this country but I also love it enough to be able to criticize it and realize that we have a long way to go, especially if you look at crime rates, sex crime rates, literacy, teenage pregnancy rates, infant mortality etc...